Talk:Mozambique Channel

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

put in this...

Social difficulties Beethoven's personal life was troubled. His encroaching deafness led him to think about suicide (documented in his Heiligenstadt Testament), as mentioned above. He was attracted to "unattainable" women (married or aristocratic); he never married. His only love affair with an identified woman began in 1805 with Josephine von Brunswick; most scholars think it ended by 1807 because she could not marry a commoner without losing custody of her children. In 1812 he wrote a long love letter to a woman only identified therein as the "Immortal Beloved". Several candidates have been suggested, but none have ever been conclusively proven to be the woman to whom the letter was written. Some scholars believe his period of low productivity from about 1812 to 1816, resulted from Beethoven's realization that he would never marry.

Beethoven quarreled, often bitterly, with his relatives and others (including a painful and public custody battle over his nephew Karl). He frequently treated other people badly. He changed addresses often, and had strange personal habits, such as wearing dirty clothing even as he washed compulsively.[citation needed] Nonetheless, he had a close and devoted circle of friends all his life.

Many listeners perceive echoes of Beethoven's life in his music, which often depicts struggle followed by triumph. This description is often applied to Beethoven's creation of masterpieces in the face of his severe personal difficulties.